Judy Blume to W. B. Yeats

Our start point is Judy Blume. Her Are you there God? It’s Me Margaret (1970) was a bit of a sensation in the children’s lit world because it shockingly dared to mention the unmentionable (menstruation! Shush!)

Even though I was an adult (well, at least I was over 21, adult may be a bit of a stretch) when the book was first published, I’ve actually read it. I was a teacher and thought it a good idea to keep up with adolescent fiction as best I could.

The book was very popular and – ridiculously – controversial. And that’s pretty much all I remember about it. 

Fast forward fifteen years to a debut novel that landed with another set of literary fireworks: Jeanette Winterson’s autobiographical coming-of -age-novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (1985).

It’s a wonderful and whacky story about growing up (gosh! Lesbian!) in a northern town with those weird and whacky people known as your (in this case religiously) homophobic family. (Only Winterson’s is a little whackier than most.)

Cross the Pennines to York and a decade later we have another amazing debut novel about growing up and family – Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995).

Ruby Lennox is the all-seeing narrator in a novel crowded with multi-generational births, marriages and deaths, unlikely incidents, outlandish characters, and tragi-comic misadventures.

One is about her grandmother’s fiancé Jack who – in WW1 – gets a safe posting as a dog trainer. Of course, things have a way of not turning out as expected. Jack is killed on the Somme when leaving his trench to rescue one of his dogs to which he had become emotionally attached. 

WW1 brings me to Frank Richards whose Old Soldiers Never Die (1933) is that rare WW1 memoir written by a private.

Richards, who had served in India and Burma, was recalled to the ranks in 1914,  As part of the BEF he took part in the retreat from Mons and served more or less unscarred through the entire war, taking part in almost every major campaign on the Western Front. If you’re ever looking for a personal account of the war, you could do well to start with Old Soldiers.

Richards was a signalman with that most literary of regiments, the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and the Military Medal but refused offers of promotion and remained a private throughout the war.

Richards served with Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves and, when he was writing his memoir, he wrote to Graves asking for his advice. Graves helped edit the manuscript and found a publisher. The book sold well.

Graves of course had written his own remarkable account of the war Goodbye to All That. Some years later he wrote I, Claudius (1934) – a first-person narrative in which Claudius – who was born into the imperial Roman first family – observes the family machinations and mayhem. 

Claudius was a sickly child with a limp and a stammer. The family considered him mentally deficient; they shunned and mocked him. Advised to play the fool to avoid attention, Claudius survived the cut-throat intrigue and infighting to be crowned emperor.

Claudius was a quintessential ugly duckling.  Out of place in his family, he emerges victorious. Just as the swan whose egg ended up in a duck’s nest in Hans Christian Andersen’s folk tale.of 1843 The Ugly Duckling

Mocked, shunned and bullied as a very odd duck – the ugly duckling eventually discovers, of course, that he is a swan. He finds his true family, his tribe, his game.

The Wild Swans at Coole is the title poem of the W.B.Yeats collection of 1917 and1919. He dedicated the book dedicated to Major Robert Gregory – the Royal Flying Corps fighter pilot who plunged to his death in Italy in January 1918.

It’s a meditative and melancholy poem. Things were changing and Yeats was getting older. He was not happy about either.